Week of November 20th.

Here is a summary of the european news this week, which has been dominated by two, three, two and a half topics:

Economy and Ireland. The euro was sliding down at the beginning of the week, receding to its lowest point in a month[*], following the worries on the Irish economy; at the same time the Irish government was rejecting any idea of a bail-out coming from the European fund of financial stabilization [*,*]. But at mid-week, after a meeting of the economic and finance ministers of the eurozone [*] and the coming in Dublin of expert from the EU and International Monetary Fund – officially on an evaluation mission – the certainty of an upcoming bailout, which could be above 50 billions euros, in the next days reassured the markets and the euro moved up again [*,*,*].

EU budget for 2011 (or the lack of it). Negociations on the Union budget for 2011 are still in deadlock. If the European Parliament resigned itself to an budget increase much less below the 6% asked (Member states won’t accept anything above 2.9%), MEPs still wish to be fully part of future talks on proper appropriation, long term funding for the Union – i.e. the creation of an EU tax. [*,*,*,*,*,*,*] Some progress could be expected in the upcoming Council meeting.

NATO EU-USA Summit. On November 20th, on the side of the NATO summit in Lisbon, the American president will meet representant of the EU, for less than two hours. B. Obama is not expecting anything from the meeting and it is not clear what exactly Mrs Barroso and von Rompuy are expecting. It is an extra lite summit, which, if it ever is remembered, will be so as the one which raise the least expectations possible. [*,*,*]